The big news over the past week has been the record breaking California fires, which have destroyed more than 9,000 homes. There have been the usual slick denials from the politicians over who was responsible for the promised but not executed clearing of brush in forested areas. I particularly enjoyed the comment by actor Mel Gibson, who lost his home, when discussing the disaster with podcaster Joe Rogan. Rogan, a former Californian said, “They spent $24 billion last year on the homeless, and what did they spend on preventing these wildfires?” Rogan asked and answered: “Zip.” “Zip,” Gibson agreed. “And in 2019, [Governor Gavin] Newsom said, you know, that he would take care of the forest, maintain the forest and do all that kinda stuff. He didn’t do anything.” “On top of that, they cut the water off,” Rogan responded and Gibson then joked, “All our tax dollars probably went for Gavin’s hair gel.”
Also coming from the bad news file is the report that the fire has caused President Joe Biden to call off his trip to Rome, where he was supposed to have an Audience with Pope Francis on January 10th. What Biden expects to accomplish in Washington to help mitigate the effects of the fire is not clear as he has sent all the available money in the Treasury to sustain the wars in Ukraine and Gaza. Plus, Genocide Joe’s aides would have to explain to him that California is regarded as part of the United States. Many of us traditional Catholics who have been lobbying the Vatican would have preferred that Biden travel to Italy in hopes that the Pope just might be willing to reestablish some moral authority coming out of the Papacy by doing the right thing, which would be to excommunicate Biden for his active support of abortion, gay marriage and genocide of Christian Arabs being carried out by the Israelis in Palestine. It has always been assumed that the Pope would not under any circumstances excommunicate an American president, but it was clearly worth making the effort to demonstrate that there might actually be some accountability in the US government even if it has to come from a foreign source. Alas, that hope was perhaps delusional.
One anticipates that the truly big story will surface next week when someone will undoubtedly misbehave at the Inauguration in Washington. Even as the transfer of presidential authority from Joe Biden to Donald Trump is being prepared, there have been the usual mixed signals combined with questionable narratives coming out of the two political parties. Donald Trump has led the way with a flurry of foreign policy proposals that have boggled the mind as a response to the correct belief that the Biden Administration has bungled badly its responsibility to keep the US safe and to engage in a foreign policy that would benefit the American people.
That means that Trump’s call for a dramatic change of direction among the deeply entrenched political class in our country in order to avoid repeating the calamitous Afghanistan experience in the Middle East, Eastern Europe and over Taiwan is sound. But unfortunately, the MAGA remedy might well be as bad or even worse than the mess left behind by the Biden gaggle of policy makers, starting with the worst Secretary of State within living memory in the person of Israel’s latest lawyer Antony Blinken. Indeed, the utter failure of the past four years suggests looking ahead that the real danger that confronts Americans is that the often ignorant cabinet-level placeholders who proliferated under Biden appear to be largely duplicated under the incoming regime of President-elect Donald Trump. Given the culture that produces top-level political appointees, White House advisers are rarely selected for their experience or knowledge and instead are all too often acquired due to racial or ethnic profiling or as a reward for their personal loyalty to the head of state.
The irony is that Donald Trump has been correct in understanding that Americans are tired of war in places that they cannot find on a map. In fact, Trump might well have obtained his margin of victory over Biden through voters who were attracted by his verbal rejection of the “stupid wars” that have proliferated in the past twenty-five years. But now that he has won, Trump is unrestrained and his darker side has been unleashed. His nominees for cabinet posts are nearly all aggressively Zionist and pro-Israel while also combative regarding both Russia and China. Trump himself has muddied the waters in the past several weeks by calling for resuming control of the Panama Canal to counter claimed gouging on tolls and Chinese engagement in its operations, has threatened “hell to pay” on the Gazans if they do not release the Israeli hostages by inauguration day, has called for annexing Greenland to improve US security, has not rejected recent Biden troop increases in Syria, has called for renaming the Gulf of Mexico, has proposed that Canada become the 51st state, and is reported to be discussing with the Israelis an attack on Iran. He and his spokesmen have also warned Russia that the US will provide more arms to Ukraine if Vladimir Putin does not agree to negotiations to end the Ukraine war “in one day” after Donald Trump is in office, though the president-to-be is now conceding that it might take longer. Trump has also repeatedly self-identified as the “most pro-Israel” candidate for public office, similar to the claims made by country club Catholic Joe Biden that he is a Zionist, as being close to Israel and American Jews currently serves as a sine qua non for those who are active in American politics.
The new GOP dominance of both the House and Senate means that the Congress will be on board to provide backup for the new Administration and it will also mean doubling down on the near total current submission to Israel and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The new Republican dominated 119th Congress’s House of Representatives as one of its first official acts, one which has nothing to do with the United States, has just passed a bill by a 243 to 140 vote, with 45 Democrats joining the majority of Republicans. Representative Thomas Massie was the only member of the GOP caucus having sufficient integrity to refuse to vote in favor of the bill.
“The Illegitimate Court Counteraction Act” sanctions the International Criminal Court (ICC) over its attempt to serve arrest warrants on Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for the crime of genocide. Travel to the US by members of the court will be banned and their personal property will be subject to confiscation. Any court officials attempting to arrest or investigate Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are covered by the Act. The bill is now likely to pass through the Senate before being signed by Trump. Representative Brian Mast of Florida, the Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and co-sponsor of the legislation, commented that “America is passing this law because a kangaroo court is seeking to arrest the prime minister of our great ally.” Mast, a legless Israeli army veteran who sometimes wears his IDF uniform to Congressional sessions, accused the court of antisemitism. He added that “This bill sends an incredibly important message across the globe… Do not get in the way of America or our allies trying to bring our people home. You will be given no quarter, and again, you will certainly not be welcome on American soil.” One assumes that there will be additional legislation to carry out the deportation of pro-Palestinian protesters, as Trump has several times promised, as well as further steps to criminalize all criticism of the Jewish state, making Israel yet again the big winner in the recent election.
Will the US invade Greenland, Mexico, Canada, Iran and Panama? Who knows? But for sure the incoming administration sounds a lot like Joe Biden’s wars on demand or possibly even worse, maybe including even a doubling down on the use of force majeure as a poorly conceived kneejerk response to policies that have manifestly and quite visibly failed for the past twenty years. Americans today are less secure, more troubled by internal dissent and poorer than they were in 2001. It is time for both parties to stop trying to save face by coming out with the same old shibboleths based on fear and threats that have been used by the political animals to keep a cowed public in line. Trump must understand that if genuine change does not come, the Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement will become a short footnote in a future history book, seen as little more than the first step in a great upheaval and revolutionary reordering that will surely follow when the American people realize that they have been had and rise-up just like in 1776 to regain their freedom.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is [email protected].
